Dr Paul Allen

  This segment of Eph 4 is verses 4–6, where Paul says, “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope at your calling—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” We can see that this passage is brought to us by the number 1; Paul is really emphasising the oneness of the body of Christ, the oneness of the church. Of course, this is an implication of much of the argument through chapters 2–3—Jew and Gentile being brought together [and] forming the one temple of God, the one building in which God would dwell by His Spirit. The Church as the Body of Christ So the oneness of God’s people has already been developed theologically. This is kind of a recap, emphasising the point in this chapter about the body of Christ. But it’s worth going through each of these elements that Paul lists. He says that “There is one body” in verse 4. In 1:22–23 he refers to Christ’s body as being the church, the people of G...

Here we have some of the most difficult and challenging verses of the Letter to the Ephesians in 4:7–10. Paul says, “Now grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of the Messiah’s gift. For it says: When He ascended on high, He took prisoners into captivity; He gave gifts to people. But what does ‘He ascended’ mean except that He descended to the lower parts of the earth? The One who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.” There are two difficult parts of this passage: first, verses 7–8 and what the quotation is all about from Psa 68; and then what on earth verses 9–10 is all about. The Reference to Psalm 68 First, the psalm. Paul is quoting from Psa 68:18. It’s important, whenever an OT citation is quoted in the NT, that we pause and think about the context of that passage because it’s been demonstrated that the NT authors often had the wider context in mind as they cited a particular text. So what is Psa 68 ab...